The Burdens We Bear
by jfrost22792
Summary: The Courier died that night, atop the lonely graveyard, bound and helpless. The man who rose though, might just be able to bear the weight of the world, or at least, one small part of it. He calls himself Atlas, not his real name, or at least, not his name from before. M Courier/F OC (Willow). NCR heavy story, will strive for some realism in the Wasteland.


**I own nothing of the copyrighted material present.**

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"You sure this is what you want, Atlas?"

I turned to see Sunny there, her usually bright smile tapered by the day's grim trials. The Powder Gangers had attacked Goodsprings, there had only been about ten of them, but few here knew so much as how to hold a gun on their own, much less fight with it.

"I told you I was leaving after the funeral Sunny, doesn't feel right staying here after all this…"

She sighed again, long and tired, "It wasn't your fault you know, that we only lost one was a small miracle." She stepped closer then, placing a comforting hand on my arm. "Trudy would be dead right now if you hadn't gotten that shot off with the fancy pistol of yours, not to mention the half dozen bullets you pulled out of the towns folk after."

She shoved me lightly then, her smirk turning light with mischief, "Not bad doctoring for a man that can't remember his own name."

"Two to the head can do that." I smiled a tightly down at her, she had been a god's send in the week after Doc Mitchell got me up and around.

She wasn't joking about the memory problems though, with the place I'd been shot…he said it's likely whoever I was is gone…for good. I might be able to pick a fragmented memory here or there with the right stimulus, but that was the best I could hope for.

I shivered, thinking back to it.

Waking up and looking into the digital display, seeing the unfamiliar dark blue eyes, and short sandy blond hair. I had had a strong jaw, and lightly tanned skin, the scars on my forehead soon drew my attention though.

Oddly enough, I could recall the things I had learned before, if not how I had learned them.

Things like how to crack a top-level RobCo security encryption, get a laser rifle working again after a short, or even salvage the drained cells. The oddest though, was how detailed my memory was for medicine. I had pulled bullet after bullet out of the towns people, once the fighting had ended. Me and Doctor Mitchell had set to saving as many lives as possible.

We had saved everyone…but one.

Easy Pete had ended up being the hero of the small battle, one of the Powder Gangers' and managed to chuck a lit stick of dynamite into the center of us. Easy Pete had seen it before the rest of us, and before anyone else could react, he threw himself down on top of it.

The explosion had rained gore onto those nearby, but he had saved more than a few lives. Mine and Sunny's includes. We had just finished the funeral up at Goodspring's cemetery, they had used the already undug grave that Victor had pulled me out of.

It seems Death got its due in the end, after all.

I picked up the bag at my feet and swung it onto my back, the powder gangers had been using a house on the outskirts of town to hide, I'd looted the place of anything useful yesterday. The bag and a batch small energy cells for my laser pistol, a gift from Doc Mitchell.

There was plenty of alcohol, bottles lined almost every shelf, I'd given them all to Trudy. I couldn't carry them all anyway, and I wanted to give her a small thank you for fighting when it would have been easier to just hand Ringo over.

There was a more than a few guns as well, though I had sold all of them to the general store, after Sunny picked them over of course. I had kept the .357 revolver I'd found on Joe Cobb's corpse, his head had been nearly severed when a laser from my pistol struck him from the side.

It was time to get moving though, Primm was on the horizon and I'd never find answers if I stayed here. The only lead I had was the man leading the group of "Great Khans" who had the look of New Vegas about him.

It wasn't much, but it was still something.

With a final nod and a promise to come back around, I was off on my first steps into the greater Mohave.

As I walked I went through the maps on the pip-boy 2500 Doctor Mitchell gave me when I told him I meant to set out today. It was a strange thing, barely longer than a foot, but my damaged mind supplied all the details of what it was capable of.

I would never be able to pay him back for all of this, it wasn't hard to tell this would end up saving my life before long.

I quickly put it back into the pocket of the leather armor I was wearing, a gift from Chet at the end of the battle. The pip-boy was supposed to be nearly indestructible, at least when it can to surviving blunt force trauma. One less thing to worry about…

I was three hours down the road when I hit the fork, left to Sloan and right to Primm, though that was a matter for later. Right now, a group of powder gangers and some raider were having it out in the middle of the desert.

I was about to avoid the small shack and simply try and hug the hills opposite the road, when I caught sight of the bodies piled up next to the shack…

I snuck closer to see if my eyes had seen it right…I fought the bile churning in my throat at the sight. A few men, but even more women…their clothes torn from them and the signs of the assaults that followed still plain as day on their now marbled flesh. The pain in their eyes still lingered though, even in death the hate there was oppressive.

I moved up behind them, the two Powder Gangers never even saw me coming. The laser hit the first through the heart, he dropped silently, though his friend quickly turned at the thud. It was too late for him though, he screamed as the chain reaction of the laser shot began turning his body to ash…

From the inside out.

Cobb's group had all died at a distance, I had never had to see the person I'd killed so closely before. Never had to watch them as they died. I thought I'd feel horrified with myself, or at least conflicted, but the bodies behind me killed any pity I might have had for these "people".

Though calling them animals would have been more fitting.

I didn't feel guilty for killing those gecko's that tried to make a meal of the woman by the wells back in Goodsprings, and I wouldn't feel guilty for making sure these monsters didn't dirty the air for any longer than I could help.

The fight out in the desert seems to have finished, though there was only one of the Powder Gangers left alive by that point. I snuck closer again, his distraction as he looted the bodies was a terminal error.

It took three shots, the first two missed, he was turned to the side, making the target too small for my newly used skills to manage. He turned though to see where the shots had been fired from, that made the target plenty large enough.

It had taken an hour to see all the bodies searched and looted, the prize had been a laser rifle, even if it was nearly falling apart. I had to be careful with what I took, the bag could only hold so much, and if I made it to heavy I'd be in a dangerous way if I was ambushed.

Mostly I just took any bottle caps I found, thought they had some NCR paper money on them as well, Chet mentioned it wasn't thought of very highly by Mohave merchants. Ammo was another easy grab, I couldn't use the bullets now, but I could always sell rounds when I made it to Primm. Trudy had mentioned that ammo was almost as good as bottle caps to merchant caravans traveling the long 15.

Even more so with Legion raiding parties spread throughout the desert. From what Trudy, had told me about them, getting killed in the ambush was the happy ending.

She told me about the crucifixions…

The shack bedside the bodies had little inside to take, the weapons locker was good for a few dozen 9mm. rounds, but other than that it was broken down guns and filthy clothes.

I had only walked for another hour before catching movement ahead of me, I quickly crouched down behind the crumbling wall of a collapsed building. I watched the small trailer ahead for a few long moments, then I saw the blue coats of the Powder Gangers.

There was four of them, laughing to themselves as they passed around a bottle. It was too far to try and take the shot from here with my laser pistol. Instead I slowly laser rifle off my back, it was in rough shape, but it should be able to make the shot from here.

I dug an extra micro-fusion cell out of my bag, and set it next to me. This armor wasn't made with energy ammunition in mind, and my pip-boy was in the only pocket big enough.

It took some twenty minutes before one of them moved out from the cover of the trailer, and I didn't let the chance slip.

With a light tug of trigger, the man was dropped in a heartbeat.

Everything seemed to still for a moment, and then…chaos. Another of the men ran out to check on his fallen friend, I could hear one of the others calling out to him to get back.

He never made it to his friend's side before I dropped him.

The other two stayed behind the trailer and cursed me in every way they could imagine, and then they started to throw the dynamite.

My first impulse was to run, getting caught in that explosion would be fatal. I calmed down though as I saw it go off, they couldn't throw it near enough to me from their hiding place to get to me.

So, I let them keep trying.

For ten minutes, they kept at it, cursing me one moment and then throwing another explosive at me the next. Then a silence stretched on, them likely trying to figure out if I was dead or not. Their patience to see me dead was rather thin though, because they were both moving out in a few moments, guns held out, ready to shot whatever moved.

I waited until they were a few feet away from the trailer, too far to run back once the shooting started. Then I fired on the one closest to the trailer first, the shot landed straight on chest. His friend saw me after I fired, and managed a shot off before I could fire on him. His shot embedded in the wall a foot off from me, his aim to panicked for accuracy.

I hadn't missed though, and he dropped like a ragdoll.

Quickly, I switched out the micro-fusion cell, the meter on its side showing enough charge for one more shot. So long as the cell had enough energy to fire, it could be recharged or salvaged with the right equipment.

I shook my head in exasperation, the knowledge came as simply as breathing, but never anything personal, never anything that told me who I am.

Or at least, who I was…


End file.
